PRIME-TIME NEWSMAGAZINES FADING IN RATINGS

It's been a tough fall for the networks' prime-time newsmagazines -- once hailed as a magic-bullet format that could fill any problem time period with low-cost, network-owned, moneymaking programming.

But faced with a resurgence of popularity for one-hour drama series and network scheduling changes that have altered the competitive landscape, seven of nine hours airing on ABC, CBS and NBC have posted lower ratings for the first 10 weeks of this season compared with a year ago. (Three other programs were not on the air last year in comparable time periods.)

Some of the declines are minor -- the Sunday-at-7 edition of NBC's Dateline is off only about 2 percent -- but others are significant:

ABC's Wednesday 20/20 hour has slipped by 14 percent, the Friday edition by 11 percent. CBS' 60 Minutes is down 11 percent among total viewers, while 48 Hours is off 7 percent. Dateline has lost more than 7 percent of its Monday viewership and about 5 percent of the Tuesday audience.

Indeed, the only two newsmagazine hours to show ratings increases from last year are Wednesday's Dateline (up 5 percent) and Friday's Dateline (up about 8 percent).

The multimillion-dollar question, of course, is why this is happening, and there appears to be no final answer.

With 12 hours of newsmagazines now on the prime-time schedules of ABC, CBS and NBC, a senior advertising executive wonders if something fundamental is at work here: "Have we possibly reached the saturation point?" said Stacey Lynn Koerner, vice president of broadcast research at the media buying/planning firm TN Media.

"I definitely think viewers are somewhat fatigued with the format generally," Koerner said. "Everyone's talking about this being the year of the drama. Viewers are being given a choice for a narrative option."

Nowhere is the issue more urgent than at ABC, where 20/20 has experienced greater ratings declines than its counterparts at CBS and NBC. This despite the fact that ABC, thanks to Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, has become the network with the ratings momentum in prime time.

Collectively, the Wednesday and Friday editions of 20/20 are off by an average of 13 percent. While the 20/20 that aired on Sundays last fall (now off the schedule) ranked 39th in total viewership, the Monday hour introduced this fall currently ranks 59th. The awkward new 20/20 Downtown Thursday hour ranks 86th.

But Victor Neufeld, the veteran executive producer of the 20/20 programs, says the ratings slippage reflects only the usual cyclical nature of TV. Such cycles involve unpredictable shifts in viewer tastes, and ratings also are affected by how many magazines air on a given night, the relative success and compatibility of shows that air before and after it, and what the direct competition is.

In addition, he said, "All these programs are full of information and that serves the public interest."

They're also owned entirely by their networks, they sometimes perform better in difficult time periods than any other kind of show, and they cost the network far less to produce than entertainment programming (generally $500,000 per hour versus more than twice that for first-year dramas).

Are there too many on the air? "If there are too many, the marketplace will adjust, and there will be less of them," Neufeld said. "We're always working with our network to determine the right number."

To Neal Shapiro, executive producer of Dateline, the dip in newsmagazine viewership reflects, more than anything else, an absence of the kind of major news stories -- an impeachment here, a war there -- that drove news viewing a year ago.

"The biggest thing is, there's no news," Shapiro said. "There are not as many compelling stories as there were last year."

"The newsmagazine genre is a sturdy one," says CBS News President Andrew Heyward. "It deals with real people in compelling situations. It can constantly refresh itself, and it can capitalize on high-interest news stories."

On the other hand, Heyward said, "Arguably, there are too many of the same type of program. Arguably, that has diluted the identity of some programs and made them less of an appointment."

In contrast, Heyward points out that 60 Minutes remains a fixture of the Top 10 shows on the air -- the most watched and most highly regarded newsmagazine on television. And 60 Minutes II -- which didn't exist last fall, so there are no comparative ratings -- is now the second-most-popular show of its kind.

The programs that have had problems, he said, are those that have been "developed cynically, to fill a time slot, to replicate the success of something elsewhere."